Goodnight, Daniel FINISHED
by KipperMay
Summary: AU. After Willow's death, Oz deals.


Oz pushed through the crowd, ducked under the crime scene tape, and, ignoring the protests of the police and paramedics, knelt down by the girl lying silently on the ground. He cradled her head gently, planting light kisses on her forehead and cheeks. Tears filled his eyes as he held her. The police backed off for a moment, but the paramedics ignored the distraught teenager and continued working on the girl.  
"Willow, please, Willow, come back to me," Oz whispered, stroking Willow's fiery hair. "Please, I need you..." Finally, the police took him by the arm, urging him away from the only person he had ever loved in his entire life, and led him back through the crowd to where Buffy, Xander, Cordelia, and Giles waited anxiously. Oz struggled, pleaded, cried, yelled, but they still held him away from her. Soon, Giles and Xander were holding him, and everything went black.  
  
When he awoke, his first thought was of her. He sat up, head pounding, and saw Xander at his bedside. Willow was nowhere to be seen. Suddenly, as he opened his mouth to ask what was going on, the memories came flooding back. He gasped for air, the worry and grief blocking his lungs. He fell back on the pillows, suddenly exhausted, and looked at Xander.   
"Where's--where's Willow? She's getting better, right?" Xander stared at him for a moment, his eyes pained, and Oz knew. He didn't want to believe it--it couldn't happen--how--? Finally, Xander shook his head.  
"I'm sorry, Oz, she didn't make it. She was stabbed--in the heart--" Xander's voice became choked with tears that shone in his eyes, making the pain hidden there glitter and gleam and trail down his cheeks. Oz stared in shock, and wished that he could cry. The tears wouldn't come; the pain was too great. His chest felt heavy, pressed down by an invisible weight that he somehow figured would never be lifted. He got up, ignoring his pounding headache, and ran out of the hospital room. Oz could hear Xander behind him, calling after him, but still Oz ran. He had to keep moving, maybe if he never stopped--he'd never have to think, to hurt. Maybe...  
  
Oz's bare feet slapped painfully on the harsh linoleum floor, and his heart thundered in his ears. He could barely see where he was going, and crashed into a blonde girl in the hallway, and knocked her over. The girl grabbed his arm, stopping him and almost tripping him. He whirled to see who had the nerve to hinder him, his arm raised to strike, when he saw familiar eyes. The pain was familiar, at least, if nothing else.   
"Buffy...?" She smiled, a tight, forced smile, tinged with traces of the tears that had recently overcome her.   
"Oz, where are you going? You don't even have any shoes or anything.." Oz shook his head.   
"I don't know. Anywhere but here...where's Willow?" Buffy's face contorted with sadness, even as she struggled to keep calm.  
"She's...Oz, she's dead.." He held up a hand.  
"I know that. Where's her--" he gulped. He couldn't even say it. "--body?" Buffy pointed down a hallway.  
"The hospital morgue. That way." So he ran. He didn't stop, barely read the signs leading the way as he flew past. His head pounded, and his lungs burned, but how could he slow? He cursed himself for being so weak, and pushed himself until he had burst through the doors of the morgue. There she was--she was so pale--  
Suddenly dreading being there, Oz moved carefully to where she lay, pale and cold. Her hair had been brushed and done up. Oz took it down. She had always liked it better that way. He gently arranged it on her shoulders, just like she always wore it. Just like he always loved it. They had closed her eyes. He wanted so badly for them to flicker open, to fill her face with life, for one of her brilliant smiles to light up the room and to melt the icy panic in his heart. He stood watching, waiting, praying, but her eyes didn't open. He knew they'd be clouded by the beginnings of decay by now. She smelled slightly of fromaldehyde, covered cleverly by her favorite perfume. He leaned down, kissed her gently on the lips, and touched her cheek, shivering at how cold she was. The color, the beautiful blush, was gone from her face. So pale...  
The tears came, finally, and he cried, falling to his knees, clutching her hand to his chest, sobbing, crying her name over and over until Buffy and Xander showed up to take him away from her again.   
  
The funeral was nice, everyone said a nice speech about her, everyone gave nice flowers, everyone cried nicely, and they buried her in a nice neat hole and said a nice goodbye and hugged and kissed and consoled nicely and then had nicely and conveniently moved on. Sure, the pain was still there for most of them, but it was nice, "oh, wasn't she sweet" pain, and not the tearing, overwhelming grief that only HE felt, that only HE could understand. The kind that never went away. The kind that was ruthless, malicious and cunning, the kind that drove into the deepest shadows of your soul and slowly ate it away, until you were nothing but a hollow shell with nothing more to live for. It happened amazingly quickly, Oz noticed, as he walked through the halls of Sunnydale highschool. You became a shell almost before you knew what was going on. He looked at the other students, the smiles that lit up their faces once more after a few days of solemn glances and somber conversations. How quickly they forget, he thought. How quickly they move on. None of them even knew her, none of them even cared. He found himself hating them, a deep, dark, fiery hate that scared him. He couldn't live this way.  
  
Mrs. Osbourne knocked again on her son's door. "Daniel, honey, are you all right?" She turned the doorknob, and, to her surprise, the door swung open easily. "Daniel?" Mrs. Osbourne moved further into the dark bedroom, and noticed a slip of paper pinned to Oz's pillow. Picking it up, she read:  
For Willow. For always.  
  
Looking around, she noticed that the room was perfectly clean, nothing overlooked, everything scoured and dusted. She walked to the bathroom, and opened the door, her heart beating faster in a terrible, panicked anticipation. She didn't scream. She wasn't surprised, actually. He had loved Willow so much, more than Mrs. Osbourne could even imagine. More than she had ever loved Oz's father...  
She walked to the bathtub and reached in, closing Oz's staring eyes. She gently wiped the tears from his cold cheeks, took the razor from his hand, and began cleaning the cuts on his wrists. If they were to close up properly and look nice for the funeral, then they'd have to be clean.   
She didn't cry. Somehow, she knew that, wherever he was, they were together, and happier than he could ever have been alive. The razor was just his key, the cuts his gateway. He was still alive, and so was she. Mrs. Osbourne could feel them all around her, and, despite intense grief and longing for her son, a certain joy filled her. As she gently picked up Oz's body, taking him out of the tub and making sure the blood didn't stain the clothes he was wearing, carried him to his bed and laid him down, kissing his forehead. "Goodnight, Daniel," she whispered.  
The End 


End file.
